The Nehemiah Project

Here is an interesting article about The Nehemiah project. It was featured on NPR. The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) has over 20 years' involvement in such pursuits. LCMS World Relief and Human Care Executive Director Matthew Harrison has moved our church to do incredible things in the US and around the world.

Low-Cost Brooklyn Housing Sees Few Foreclosures

by Jim Zarroli

Yvonne Ziegler had an apartment in a central Brooklyn housing project and a decent job in an office. But like a lot of New Yorkers, she figured she'd be renting forever. Owning a place seemed beyond the realm of possibility.

Thanks to the Nehemiah project, a church-run affordable housing program, Ziegler now owns a trim, neatly maintained three-bedroom house, where she lives with her elderly mother in the Brooklyn neighborhood known as East New York. The program has built more than 4,000 houses in Brooklyn and the Bronx since the 1980s.

"When it came to light that these churches were building affordable houses and how low the mortgages were, I thought, 'Well, maybe this is something I can aspire to,' " Ziegler says.

The Nehemiah project, named for the biblical prophet who rebuilt the Temple of Jerusalem, has provided a bulwark of stability in neighborhoods once devastated by arson and neglect. That's been especially true during the mortgage crisis. In a part of the city where foreclosures topped 10 percent last year, few of the program's homeowners have defaulted on their loans.

Read the entire article here.